May Update

Spring is fully here in Bavaria now. We are having some really nice days in the high 60's and rain on and off. Plans for returning back home are in motion and it is starting to feel like it is getting close now. David is playing a lot of baseball for two of the Atomics teams. He is a little younger than most of the kids on his youth team. The youth league has players mostly twelve to fourteen years old, although in some cases some teams play sixteen year old kids on their team. More on that later. David is also playing with the younger team that has mostly nine to eleven year old players. David is still eleven for another six weeks so he is playing with both teams for now.  

We sent David off with the younger team to Erlangen which is almost a two hour drive away. They spent more time in the car then playing the game. It was still great for David as he got the game ball for going three for three at the plate with an inside the park homerun and he pitched a scoreless last inning as the Atomics came from behind to get the win.

One of the other moms on the team took some great pictures of David at the game.

The next day David had a double header with his youth team at the Atomics field in Garching. Remember I mentioned some teams playing with sixteen year old kids?

That is David on base after hitting a single off of one of the sixteen year old pitchers. Then this guy at first base was there too. You can see the massive size and weight difference. The Atomics gave up four runs in the first inning but held tough for a 6-3 loss. The second game got a little out of hand early. This team only had eight players but I can tell you that they outweighed our twelve players. The sad part was that this big guy at first had an attitude and thought he was something special. In the second game he pitched and twice fielded soft ground balls that instead of tossing to first base he chose to run over and "tag" the player out with an extra shove each time. Our coach said something to their coach about it, but it did not help. Later one of our best players and the coaches son hit another one to the pitcher. Lenny was running to first when this guy ran over to tag him. Lenny braced himself and leaned into the contact that he knew was coming. This idiot decided to tag even harder this time and hit Lenny really hard. Our coach stormed across the field from the third base box to give this kid a talk. It all calmed down quickly but the whole thing was so unnecessary. This guy batted in the top half of the next inning and was talking trash after doubling, really egging it on. The Atomics were losing by twelve runs going into the bottom of the last inning. They finally started hitting. The big bully was pulled after we scored several runs off of him and the other team had to substitute pitchers four times in the inning before finally escaping with a narrow victory. David had a couple of hits in the comeback and we were proud of the boys for fighting back.

While all of this was going on Cindy was off doing her Julie Andrews impression in the Bavarian Alps. We had another friend come see us over the weekend. Monica flew in on Friday and did a bike tour of Munich. We met her for dinner that evening at the Hofbrauhaus and for the first time got a table in the Biergarten area. Saturday she did the Neuschwanstein bike tour all day. Then Sunday while Katherine and I watched David play baseball Cindy and Monica pulled of the hat trick of Bavarian sites in one day. Incredibly they made it to The Eagle's Nest, Konigsee, and Chimsee all in one day.

Most tourists will see one of these in a day but they hit it just right. The first stop was the Eagle's Nest, where we have been before but we have never had the view due to rain and clouds.

It was not a perfectly clear day but this was by far the best it has ever been on one of our trips. It is mid-May and there was still a significant amount of snow up there.

Cindy got some good panoramic shots for the first time.

All of these sites are very popular so being able to do them all in one day is hard just because of the people and logistics. On this day they were the first bus up and made it down quickly to take the short drive to Konigsee where they found the boat to the church. They made it back from there so quickly that they went for the unplanned stop at Chimsee. It is a lake that we have been to before too with one of King Ludwig's castles on an island in the middle of the lake. They took another boat out to the island and Monica got to see the outside of the castle before they had to rush back to catch the last boat back to the car. They still had enough energy that evening to go out for an Italian dinner in our neighborhood. Monica was off the next morning back to Texas.

In other news Katherine had a scare at school after colliding heads with another student while doing cartwheels during recess. She had a cut on her head that bled and looked worse than it was. This was her at the ice cream cafe while we waiting for the doctor's office to open that afternoon. She was fine and a couple of days later there is no residual effect. She has really been working on her gymnastics skills and I think she is excited to get back to Allen and start her gymnastics classes again. 

One more baseball related item to share. On Thursday this week David played another game with the younger team. He hit his first over the fence homerun in his first at bat. There was some question at first since the fence is really just some cones set up in the outfield. Eventually the umpire recognized the homerun and called it as David stands on second base waiting. 

We have been busy having people look at the Mini that we are selling and showing our house that is for lease. We had several showings this last week and two families that have been here twice. Hopefully we can get one of them to commit so we can move on to the next phase of our plans to get home. We have two more games today with the youth team. That is all that we have going on right now. We have one trip left to Prague in early June. I am not sure if I will have another post before then.